Overbound

Context

Overbound is an obstacle-course race I created in 2025 and held for the first time on 12 September 2026 at the Île de Loisirs de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, near Paris. It offered two formats: RANKED, a timed morning race made of loops of about 2 km with an elimination rule, and OPEN, an afternoon format in waves for anyone who wanted to try.

Around the course, the event ran a festival village with food vendors and commercial partners.

The problem

Selling an event ticket is a software problem with a deadline attached: registrations must be reliable, payments must reconcile, and participants need clear information up to race day. At the same time, the event itself had to be built from nothing, with a venue, obstacles, safety cover, volunteers and partners.

I was the only developer and the main organiser, so every technical choice had to stay cheap to run and easy to fix under pressure.

My role

I led the project end to end: concept and brand, the website and ticketing platform, partner outreach and negotiation, obstacle sourcing and construction, safety coordination, volunteer organisation, budget and the event day itself.

Stack

• Next.js
• Supabase
• Stripe
• Sanity

Ticketing platform

The platform is a Next.js web application. Stripe handles payments, Supabase stores participants and registrations, and Sanity holds the editable event content, so information could change without a redeploy.

Ticketing opened on 1 March 2026 and sold more than 320 tickets across both formats.

Decisions and trade-offs

• Two formats on one course

  RANKED and OPEN shared the same obstacles but needed different rules, timing and staffing. Running them in separate time slots let one set of infrastructure serve both.

• Free places and discounts

  Free entries and discount codes helped fill the event, but they diluted ticket revenue, and printed flyers could not be attributed to sales.

• Partners as part of the experience

  Partner booths were designed as village activities rather than banners. The value varied: some created real experiences, others arrived under-equipped and returned little.

Outcome

RANKED sold out about four weeks before the event. Participants gave very positive feedback on the obstacles, the atmosphere and the village, and the first edition reached financial break-even.

Results

Tickets sold

336

Active tickets after 12 refunds

324

Starters (estimate)

About 310

Commercial partners

11

Volunteers coordinated

60

Red Cross interventions

18, none serious

What I would change

• Volunteer capacity

  There were fewer volunteers than promised, with notable no-shows, especially in the afternoon. Next time volunteers are confirmed in several stages and every area has a named lead.

• Setup started too late

  Building the course took longer than planned and relied heavily on family and friends. Site setup and race-day staffing should be separate, with delivery milestones and a time buffer.

• Measuring what works

  Flyers, discounts and partner booths were hard to link to sales. Tracking acquisition and partner value from the start would show what is worth repeating.